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Assemblyman Patrick O'Donnell Sac'to Website Bio: "While On The Long Beach City Council, He Helped Produce City's First Budget Surplus In Over A Decade...Secured Funding for Police Gang-Unit Officers...Brought Crime To Lowest Level in 41 Yrs"


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(December 2, 2014) -- Assemblyman Patrick O'Donnell (D, Long Beach) was sworn into office Dec. 1, 2014 after ten years on the Long Beach City Council (2004-2014).


The text below was visible on his taxpayer-paid Assembly webpage (screen save below for reference) on his first day in Assembly office:

[Assemblyman O'Donnell website text]

"...While on the Long Beach City Council, he helped produce the city's first budget surplus in over a decade...He also secured funding for police gang-unit officers and brought crime to its lowest level in 41 years."

[Scroll down for further]




O'Donnell Assembly webpage ("biography" tab)
Dec. 1, 2014
LBREPORT.com Fact Check
"..[H]e helped produce the city's first budget surplus in over a decade..."The short term "surplus" is due primarily to three factors: (1) the state legislature dissolving Redevelopment, an action the City opposed, which brought City Hall millions in returned property tax dollars; (2) Council budgets adopted from Sept. 2009-Sept. 2014 by Council majorities, including O'Donnell, resulted in the largest reduction in sworn police staffing in the city's more than 100 year history [and left three ELB fire stations (8, 17 and 18) without fire engines]; (3) what former Mayor Foster and City Councilmembers refer to as "pension reform" applies a portion of employee raises, approved by the City Council and paid by taxpayers, to cover a larger portion of the employee share of payments to the PERS employee pension system. In open Council sessions, city management has indicated that the city's short term surplus occurs in the context of deficits anticipated in coming years (resulting from projected spending expected to exceed anticipated revenue.) In Nov. 2013, a Council majority, including O'Donnell, voted to approve unbudgeted raises for city management personnel, which will be a factor in those anticipated deficits.
"He also secured funding for police gang-unit officers..." Funding for LBPD's gang unit has not been a specific budget spending issue. Funding for LBPD's anti-gang field unit has been a significant issue. Votes by City Council majorities, including O'Donnell, shrank (Sept. 2012 and Sept. 2013), then entirely eliminated (Sept. 2014) LBPD's field anti-gang unit. The field anti-gang unit was comprised of twenty officers and two sergeants and deployed in gang-impacted neighborhoods, enabling them to regularly interact with residents, observe real-world conditions and operate in ways not possible within an office.
  • In August 2012, then-Mayor Foster proposed a FY13 budget with no funding for the field anti-gang unit. In September 2012, O'Donnell made a Council floor motion that preserved up to half of the field anti-gang unit for one year (while eliminating half of the unit.) O'Donnell's used "one time revenue" to give the Police Chief discretion to fund up to half of the field anti-gang unit (10 officers, 1 sergeant) for 12 months. By August 2013, the field anti-gang unit had shrunk to single digit staffing.
  • In September 2013, a Council majority including O'Donnell voted for a FY14 budget that provided no structural funding for the field anti-gang unit LBPD managed to maintain the unit with a skeleton crew by drawing officers from patrol and backfilling with overtime.
  • In August 2014, Mayor Garcia proposed a FY15 budget with no funding for LBPD's field anti-gang unit. On Sept. 2, 2014 the Council's Budget Oversight Committee (Lowenthal, O'Donnell, Mungo) voted 3-0 (motion by O'Donnell, second by Mungo) to recommend approval of item 1.10 (Mayor Garcia's proposed budget.) Minutes later, O'Donnell wasn't in his seat for the full Council meeting as the Council voted 8-0 (O'Donnell absent) to approve Mayor Garcia's budget recommendations. O'Donnell entered the Council Chamber after the vote. A week later on Sept. 9, O'Donnell joined in a 9-0 required second vote enacting City Hall's FY15 budget without funding for LBPD's field anti-gang unit.
  • On budget votes from Sept. 2009 through Sept. 2014, Council majorities, including O'Donnell, adopted budgets that produced the largest reductions in sworn police officers for Long Beach taxpayers in the city's more than 100 year history. Long Beach currently (FY15) has a budgeted sworn police level available for citywide neighborhood deployment (not including officers contracted to, paid by and restricted to the Port, LGB, LBCC, LBUSD, LBTransit) roughly equivalent per capita to what Los Angeles would experience if it cut over 25% of LAPD's officers. Both L.A. (the County's largest city) and Signal Hill (one of its smallest) provide significantly higher per capita police levels for their taxpayers despite the economic downturn.
  • "...and brought crime to its lowest level in 41 years."Long Beach crime stats show reductions in violent crimes and in some cases total crimes. So do crime stats in a number of other area cities. However Long Beach violent crimes remain disproportionately concentrated in parts of Long Beach that include the western edge of O'Donnell's 4th Council district. The eastern portion of the district, including Los Altos, has nearly no violent crimes but has experienced a significant increase in property-related crimes, particularly residential burglaries. City officials have attributed the increase to factors including Sacramento's budget-driven "realignment" of incarceration policies, which made counties responsible for incarcerating some categories of felons. L.A. County releases a number of those convicted felons early for budget reasons. The Long Beach City Council cited budget reasons for reducing police staffing levels at the same time as Sacramento implemented "realignment" for budget reasons.

    Source for reference:


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